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Stories from Tony Reichhardt

Schirra during his Apollo 7 flight in October 1968.

Wally Schirra, 1923-2007

He was known as a joker, but when it came to engineering he was all business.

Marlon Green in the cockpit of one of Continental's Boeing 707s.

Aviation’s Jackie Robinson

It took a Supreme Court decision, but in 1963 Marlon Green finally broke into the majors.

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Moonbound

Who isn’t planning a lunar mission these days?

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STS-116: The Inside Guide

A tip sheet for following this week’s space shuttle mission.

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Starship on a Chip

Big distance, tiny spacecraft.

An early plastic mockup of the Nano Air Vehicle is about the size and shape of a maple seed.

Tomorrow’s Spy Plane

A Nano Air Vehicle based on a maple seed.

View of Earth from a camera on V-2 #13, launched October 24, 1946.

The First Photo From Space

In 1946, rocket-borne cameras gave us our first look at Earth from beyond the atmosphere

Cassini views Enceladus in July 2005.

Mission to Enceladus

NASA summer students plot a course for Saturn’s mysterious ice world.

Slight tweaks to SMART-1's orbit over the course of the summer allowed engineers to direct its impact point.

Moonwhackers

Europe’s SMART-1 is the first of several lunar crashes on the drawing board.

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Son of Apollo

The next lunar lander will be a giant leap ahead of the first.

Titan’s orange haze, apparent even to cameras on the Saturnorbiting Cassini spacecraft, results from sunlight breaking down methane in the atmosphere.

219 Minutes on Titan

On an uncharted world, a little spacecraft saw a lot in a very short time.

The Deep Impact mothership will capture information on the comet's freshly exposed primordial interior.

Comet Cracker

If you want to see what’s inside a comet, you’ve got to break some spacecraft.

Meteor Crater in Arizona: a recent, but not terribly large, impact scar.

Crater Face

If we could see all the holes gouged in the Earth by asteroids, we’d run screaming for cover.

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Backgrounder: State of the Station

The International Space Station is on hold while NASA answers calls for attention in the order in which they are received.

False color image of Jupiter's great red spot, as seen by Galileo's camera using near-infrared filters.

A Galileo Gallery

Postcards from our last visit to Jupiter.

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Terra Cognita

A new generation of satellites zooms in on a familiar planet.

Self-photograph made by Maj. David Simons as he approached his record altitude in 1957.

First Up?

Even before NASA was created, civilian and military labs were in search of astronauts.

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The One-Pound Problem

All the Mars Ascent Vehicle has to do is deliver 16 ounces of rocks in a container the size of a grapefruit to Martian orbit. If only it were as easy as it sounds.

Shepard, a couple of weeks before his first spaceflight in May 1961.

Birth of the Cool

Alan Barlett Shepard Jr., 1923-1998

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Fields and Streams

Portraits of space physics.

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